Pant pockets are now inventions of 2001?!?!?
on
Inventions of 2001
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· Score: 2
But tucked inside its waist seams and hidden behind zippers on the legs are three extra mesh-lined pockets for stashing everything from your cell phone to your PDA.
Boggle. Boggle again. Barf.
Since when having extra pockets in pants counts as an invention, and more, worthy of mentioning as one of the inventions of 2001?
Alan needs to realize that, although the DMCA does have important and evil implications for the freedom to code and speak in the U.S., it would not be used against a legitimate programmer such as himself. The people who have been targeted by the DMCA have been crackers: people who defeat lame encryption schemes and distribute point-and-click software that allows the masses to pirate. Although I fully support 2600 and Dmitri in their efforts (I have been a security engineer and I appreciate the truly talented invididuals in the field), DeCSS and the PDF utility are simply not in the same class as the Linux kernel and the other software Cox has worked on. He is simply a non-target and he needs to stop pretending that the DMCA affects him.
First they came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.
In my opinion, "victory" for the United States can be defined to be a narrow achievable objective: Victory is the prevention of another massive terrorist attack on United States soil led by foreign nationals from Middle Eastern countries.
First of all, what is the time frame? If you want to prevent another massive terrorist attack ever then it's clear that victory can never be achieved.
Second, what's special about Middle East? Do terrorist acts by Algerians, or Japanese, or Indonesians, or... kill people by other, less lethal ways?
The willingness of the terrorists to die in the commission of their attacks isn't a strength, it's a weakness. The willingness to die restricts potential recruits to a relatively small segment of the population
It may be a weakness from the pool-of-recruits point of view, but it's definitely a strength from the potential-operations point of view. Willingness to die is a very powerful thing and makes many kinds of attacks possible and effective.
And, of course, a terrorist group need not be composed only of those ready for the ultimate self-sacrifice. It's enough that it has some people like this.
The suspicious eyes and mouths willing to inform the authorities of any suspicious activity should accompany them wherever they go.
Them -- whom? The terrorists? Well, if you know who they are, your problems are mostly over. Or are you saying that all foreigners should be watched closely all the time? Or maybe all people who don't look European? Or those who were a bit slow in genuflecting towards Washington yesterday?
No suspected hijackers or accomplices born in the United States have been identified so far.
Two words: Timothy McVeigh
Some means must be found to quickly distinguish them from foreign nationals so that they can efficiently exercise their rights as citizens
First, aren't there such things as human rights? You know, ones that do not depend on which color passport is in your pocket?
Second, I find it very hard to imagine a situation where FBI/NSA/CIA/etc. have a hard time in preventing or investigating a terrorist act because they have problems figuring out who is a US citizen and who is not.
As for the ones saying the Constitution doesn't protect anonymous speech, all I can say is "Wrong!". Nowhere in the First Amendment does it require anyone to prove their true identity before they speak.
You are somewhat confused. The Constitution does protect anonymous speech and, of course, revealing one's true identity before speaking is not required. But that's not the point. The Constitution protects speech, even anonymous, but it does not protect anonymity of the speaker.
What it means is that anyone can try to discover the identity of the speaker, and if they succeed by legal means, the speaker cannot do anything about it -- he cannot go to court and claim that his [non-existent] right to anonymity was violated.
Think more along the lines that you have a several ball point pens (maybe each with a different colour inks) than a quill pen and lots of bottles of ink.
Well, yeah, but see, I like to write in that weird dark-orange color. Unfortunately it's economically infeasible to produce dark-orange ballpoint pens -- so shall I shut up and write with black like everybody else? "You can have any color as long as...". With my quill and bottles of ink I can make any color I want, including my favorite.
For the sealed boxes to be cheap they have to be mass-market. What happens to those of different needs, or even tastes?
For anybody interested, Psion's RevoPlus, rebadged as Diamond Mako, is being sold all over the net for ~$100 a pop. Travel modem is another $60 or so, and of course these things can talk IR to GSM phones.
Chinese culture, on the other hand, is the oldest culture in existance and has existed, in one form or another, for 2,000 years.
Hey man, learn your history. Even ignoring people like Egyptians, Jewish culture certainly existed for much more than 2000 years. For Chrissakes, Christianity is 2000 years old!
Yeah, right. Like I'm going to trust an outfit that puts a Turing-complete interpreter in a MAIL CLIENT, and gives it full access to both the filesystem and the outgoing mail queue for ANYTHING related to security
You mean Emacs, right? Wasn't there a time when incoming mail opened in Emacs's mail client could execute arbitrary Elisp code?
I'm sorry, but that is neodarwinian fascist nonsense. Nobody is hard wired to do *anything*. We are all humans, and we all have a choice. We are not automatons, driven by instinct.
I'm sorry, too, but that point of view doesn't pass a reality check. Yes, we are not automatons driven by instincts, but we are not abstract minds inhabiting some plane of ideas either. You cannot ignore the body, which clearly has a lot of stuff "hardwired" into it. And before you ask, no, I don't accept the popular-in-Catholicism-etc. idea that body urges are evil/sinful and should be suppressed in favor of "pure" mind.
People are hardwired for a lot of things. Some are obvious -- thirst, hunger, self-preservation, sex, protection of children. Some are more controversial -- e.g. territoriality. Some are very controversial -- e.g. aggression. But saying that no one is hardwired to do anything is just false.
Note that this does not mean that there is no personal responsibility -- there definitely is, and "uncontrollable urge" is not a justification for doing something bad. In a society people are expected to control their urges and those who break the rules, whatever they may be, are punished. That's fine. But even if the urges are controlled/suppressed you cannot deny their existence. Christianity for centuries tried to promote the idea that sex is sinful and how successful has it been? (besides keeping a whole lot of psychotherapists in business).
I do think that where people cannot be responsible for themselves, the wider sommunity should step in
That's very dangerous ground you walk on. All totalitarian regimes start from this point. The critical questions, as usual, are "Who decides?" and "Who is in control?". Should government decide whether I am addicted to Quake and place me in a special category of people who can't buy computer games and can access only special computers which report to my probation officer how much have I played today? Or maybe it will decide that I am addicted to porn and put a device on me that will give me an electric shock every time I get an erection -- that should "cure" me of porn, right?
Is this any harder in the "real world" than it was in school? Nope. The internet is out there for everybody, and it's now just too hard to track everyone's work in a foolproof way
You don't understand. In a school you have to prove something about yourself, viz. that you have acquired some knowledge. In the real world nobody really cares about what knowledge happens to sit inside your head. In the real world people care about getting things done and if you can do things by getting stuff off the net, more power to you.
If someone handed you one and it looked real, would you call the university to verify that it was real? No, you'd say "wow, MIT!" and hire him/her.
Heh. Haven't worked for large companies, have you? A mom-and-pop shop might not check, but a big corp *will* check, and it will check your previous jobs, and dates on them, and etc. etc.
Alice's signal, to any observer that lacks the proper OTP, looks like white noise. It is still a signal because Bob, having the proper OTP, can decode it into useful information.
You are mixing up two concepts: "true" white noise on the one hand, and something that cannot be proven NOT to be white noise, on the other hand. Algorithms A and A' are irrelevant -- they can be simple XOR for argument's sake.
Alice's algorithm does NOT result in a pure white noise -- it just LOOKS like pure white noise and it is impossible to prove otherwise.
Steganography - hope I spelled it right this time - is the attempt to hide a signal
I am hiding a signal. If Alice does what I described and sends the output to Bob, then Bob, provided he knows how the streams were mixed and has a copy of the OTP, can extract the original information from the seemingly-white-noise message.
On the other hand, Eve, should she happen to intercept the message, cannot prove that there is anything but white noise in the message.
It is mathematically impossible to hide information in another medium that cannot be figured out
Bullshit. Take some data, encrypt it with OTP, and combine the result, using some non-utterly-trivial mix strategy, with white noise. If you want you can match the statistical characteristics of white noise to the ones of your OTP stream.
That, of course, does not answer the question why would anybody send white noise to another person, but it is hiding information in another medium. What's mathematically impossible about it?
No, I disagree. See, if you rent, then the idea is that you get upgrades included
Point taken.
Still, keep in mind that for major pieces of software like Office, the next-version-release-dates are generally known a year or two in advance. MS software release cycle is quite predictable all by itself.
typically people pay a big premium for conveince
People do, but CFOs of corporations are not really people;-). Besides, it's a question of the absolute amount: I'll pay an extra quarter for a convenient can of Pepsi without thinking, but I will not pay extra thousands of dollars without checking carefully if I can get it cheaper.
So if you sign on for 3 years or 5 years, that is the price you pay. So that is a constant, wouldn't you agree?
Yes it is, but so is the price you pay upfront to "own" software forever. You were claiming that renting software gives you *more* predictability -- well, no, it gives you exactly the same predictability as buying.
But the major hassle, co-ordinating a huge upgrade over hundreds or thousands of machines is eliminated at least in part by the subscription
I don't think so. What will happen is that MS will just send you a CD for a network install and you have to do all the work yourself anyway. You still have to admin/manage everything -- all we are talking about is payment terms for software, nothing else. How I pay for software has no relationship to the ease of using/upgrading it.
Yes, it is. For the same reason that people will pay $150k for a $125k house over the course of 30 years
OK, let's see. Let's whip out my Excel and calculate the implied interest rate. We have a $2,500 value that I pay off by making monthly payments of $100 for three years... That's 2.12% monthly, which means an annualized interest rate of slightly over 25%. Still think it's a good deal? Even borrowing from credit cards makes more sense...
How come? Unless MS gives you guarantees about pricing for many years down the road (highly unlikely) you have exactly the same predicting power.
Buy: Pay a chunk now, amortize it over three years, do it again at unknown cost.
Rent: Pay monthly over three years, do it again at unknown cost.
they won't have to worry about deploying/managing updates and upgrades
They do. First of all, they'll have to deal with security patches. Second, once three years are over and a new version comes in, who do you think will have to deal with data migration and untangling these little clever hacks that users wrote using the suddenly-not-supported-any-more features?
Getting the latest (or any version) is going to cost $2500. Thats a big expenditure. Now, instead of paying for it all at once, maybe it'd be nice for them to pay $75/month for three years. That'd work out better for a huge majority of customers
In one way, yes. It's always better to pay later than to pay early. In your scheme MS is basically giving everybody a three-year interest-free loan.
On the other hand, the choice disappears: maybe after three years I am in a bad financial shape. Under the 'buy' model my operating costs for software are zero. Under the 'rent' model, my operating costs are determined by MS.
Even if its more than that, say $100/month, its a deal for most customers
It is? 100 x 36 = $3,600. You mean instead of paying $2,500 to use something forever I get to pay $3,600 to use exactly the same thing for 3 years and that's a good deal???!
Supercavitation is really not anything new, however it spells big big trouble for the US military
I doubt it very much. The US submarine doctrine has always been based on stealth: staying undetected (aka pretending to be a big hole in the middle of the ocean) is US subs' strong suit. I believe there is general consensus that staying-stealthy-while-detecting-the-other-guy capabilities of US Navy are noticeably better than those of the Russians.
Nothing in our arsenal comes even close to competing with this technology, and, as the post said, it will change the face of naval warfare
Maybe, maybe not. Keep in mind that supercavitating torpedos have a very, very big drawback -- they are not guided. They are basically a bullet -- you shoot it out and it goes in a straight line until it hits something or runs out of steam. This means they are useful only at very short ranges, and only if you have a very good idea where the enemy submarine is. Neither condition is usually true in submarine warfare.
what good are our carrier groups when you've got torpedoes coming in as fast as an Indycar (faster!).
Carrier groups have an anti-sub screen. Generally the large surface groups try not to get an enemy sub anywhere close to shoot off a torp, supercavitating or not. If a sub managed to get close enough to shoot, I doubt it would matter very much whether the torpedo is very fast.
Besides, there are subs which are equipped with anti-ship cruise missiles. Cruise missles are even faster, can be launched from farther away, and can guide themselves. This is already an existing threat and it sounds more dangerous to me than supercavitating torps.
Somehow I doubt the Navy will be holding a big discount sale of its carriers any time soon.
Unless human miniaturization happens and mouth-to-ear distance shrinks considerably, I don't think any cellular phone the size of a finger is going to be useful. Unless, of course, it folds and unfolds in a complicated, plasticky-breakable way. And you have to put the dialing buttons on that "finger device", right? And probably some LCD screen to show you what you punched in? And a battery to make it last through the day, at least? This all has to fit on/in one finger, and you expect it to become available in a couple of years? I don't think so.
Public perception of hackers needs to be addressed as well as unfiying the rights of people and seeing past public opinion.
You don't get the point. The solution to the problem is not to make hax0rs acceptable. The solution is to make sure that all people, regardless of whether the majority thinks they are wackos or upstanding citizens, have the same rights.
It's a legal issue: separating people into having-legal-meaning classes. For example if you were convicted of felony, you cannot buy a gun -- you rights are different from those of "normal" people.
The arguments at the trial came very close to claiming that suspicious malcontents (hax0rs or not) have less rights that Joe Sixpacks. And that is what caused my hackles to rise.
So 2600 can't link to DeCSS because they're l33t hax0rs. However, the New York Times can link to DeCSS because their legitimate reporters.
What if 2600 linked to the New York Times article?
To hell with linking to NYT. There is a huge underlying assumption here: that people disapproved by mainstream (e.g. 2600) have less rights than people approved by mainstream (e.g. NYT). This, obviously, doesn't look like a sustainable position, at least if you state it openly. However, veiling it in language of 'intent' seems to be OK.
If someone is going to claim that 133t hax0rs cannot legally do anything NYT can do, I would like to ask that person to submit a system of ratings (e.g. 1 - highly patriotic. Jumps when told to jump, even from tall buildings;.... 5 - doubts the word of government. Shoot on sight.) and apply them to everybody.
"Hey, citizen class 4! You are not allowed to look there!"
Why and how is a computer program expressive speech? What does it express?
I don't see this as a hard question. Computer code that I write expresses my ideas, my understandings, my envisioning of how things (should) work. When I design a system, oftentimes it's easier to think in computer code than in "normal" words.
For a simple example, consider the Tower of Hanoi puzzle solution, expressed in Lisp. It's not really about telling computer to move things around. It's about the ideas of recursion and problem-solving, very elegantly expressed. This piece of code is about an idea, not about telling a computer how to do things.
That's my point. Even with this stupidly simple interface there is still far too much that can go wrong
...
Basically the problem is that computers are open-ended and there's too much that's outside the seller's control.
The key expression was "intrinsically complex problems". My point is that life is complicated and there is very little anybody can do about it, even if [shudder] it was all under the seller's control. Very-limited-functionality devices work in some cases and do not work in others. Why do you think electric/electronic typewriters disappeared? They are much simpler to use than word processors, aren't they?
Computers are open-ended for a reason -- they are general-purpose devices for manipulating symbols. Yes, for some people that's too much complexity to handle. But they are probably the same people that stand before a soft drink dispenser in McDonalds for five minutes pulling a lever on which "Push for ice" is written (yes, I've personally seen this. After five minutes the guy went to the counter to complain that the machine is broken).
"Make something that any idiot can use, and only idiots will use it".
It would be nice if people realised that paying for the extra service at the small shop is worth it, but it has been shown time and time again people will go for cheaper
And how do you know that the extra service at the small shop is worth the extra price? For some people it is, and for some it is not.
A very simple example -- in my town there is old/small/family hardware store, and a Home Depot close by. Small items (hangers, adapters, boxes of nails, etc.) cost one and a half to two time more in the small shop than they cost at Home Depot. For technical questions (such as "can I use widget foo with attachment bar and do I need qux for it?") the salespeople at the small shop are about as useful as the Home Depot droids, which is to say not at all.
To me it seems that the small shop just cannot compete. I don't see any additional benefit to me from buying stuff there, so I don't. I would assume that most people around do the same thing.
Now, why again, "paying for the extra service at the small shop is worth it"?
"Make it idiot-proof, and somebody will make a better idiot"
Imagine a computer with three buttons: Send Mail. Read Mail. Browse Web.
Making a very-limited-choice interface is not a solution for dealing with intrinsically complex problems.
"Send Mail" button. OK. Wait, my mail returned to me with the "address unknown" message! The button doesn't work!
"Read Mail" button. OK. But where is my "Print" button, and "Reply to" button, and "Delete" button, and "Move to folder" button, and how do I deal with make-money-fast messages a hundred of which is sitting in my inbox...
"Browse Web" button. Hmm... You mean it is just a shortcut to Internet Explorer? Or is it supposed to do something else? And what are all these buttons on websites? I was promised I would need only three buttons and this site has four! Oh, here is a simple site, it just says "type your AOL password here and click OK" -- that I can do...
Slashdot Mirror
But tucked inside its waist seams and hidden behind zippers on the legs are three extra mesh-lined pockets for stashing everything from your cell phone to your PDA.
Boggle. Boggle again. Barf.
Since when having extra pockets in pants counts as an invention, and more, worthy of mentioning as one of the inventions of 2001?
Alan needs to realize that, although the DMCA does have important and evil implications for the freedom to code and speak in the U.S., it would not be used against a legitimate programmer such as himself. The people who have been targeted by the DMCA have been crackers: people who defeat lame encryption schemes and distribute point-and-click software that allows the masses to pirate. Although I fully support 2600 and Dmitri in their efforts (I have been a security engineer and I appreciate the truly talented invididuals in the field), DeCSS and the PDF utility are simply not in the same class as the Linux kernel and the other software Cox has worked on. He is simply a non-target and he needs to stop pretending that the DMCA affects him.
First they came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.
by Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945
In my opinion, "victory" for the United States can be defined to be a narrow achievable objective: Victory is the prevention of another massive terrorist attack on United States soil led by foreign nationals from Middle Eastern countries.
First of all, what is the time frame? If you want to prevent another massive terrorist attack ever then it's clear that victory can never be achieved.
Second, what's special about Middle East? Do terrorist acts by Algerians, or Japanese, or Indonesians, or... kill people by other, less lethal ways?
The willingness of the terrorists to die in the commission of their attacks isn't a strength, it's a weakness. The willingness to die restricts potential recruits to a relatively small segment of the population
It may be a weakness from the pool-of-recruits point of view, but it's definitely a strength from the potential-operations point of view. Willingness to die is a very powerful thing and makes many kinds of attacks possible and effective.
And, of course, a terrorist group need not be composed only of those ready for the ultimate self-sacrifice. It's enough that it has some people like this.
The suspicious eyes and mouths willing to inform the authorities of any suspicious activity should accompany them wherever they go.
Them -- whom? The terrorists? Well, if you know who they are, your problems are mostly over. Or are you saying that all foreigners should be watched closely all the time? Or maybe all people who don't look European? Or those who were a bit slow in genuflecting towards Washington yesterday?
No suspected hijackers or accomplices born in the United States have been identified so far.
Two words: Timothy McVeigh
Some means must be found to quickly distinguish them from foreign nationals so that they can efficiently exercise their rights as citizens
First, aren't there such things as human rights? You know, ones that do not depend on which color passport is in your pocket?
Second, I find it very hard to imagine a situation where FBI/NSA/CIA/etc. have a hard time in preventing or investigating a terrorist act because they have problems figuring out who is a US citizen and who is not.
As for the ones saying the Constitution doesn't protect anonymous speech, all I can say is "Wrong!". Nowhere in the First Amendment does it require anyone to prove their true identity before they speak.
You are somewhat confused. The Constitution does protect anonymous speech and, of course, revealing one's true identity before speaking is not required. But that's not the point. The Constitution protects speech, even anonymous, but it does not protect anonymity of the speaker.
What it means is that anyone can try to discover the identity of the speaker, and if they succeed by legal means, the speaker cannot do anything about it -- he cannot go to court and claim that his [non-existent] right to anonymity was violated.
Kaa
Think more along the lines that you have a several ball point pens (maybe each with a different colour inks) than a quill pen and lots of bottles of ink.
...". With my quill and bottles of ink I can make any color I want, including my favorite.
Well, yeah, but see, I like to write in that weird dark-orange color. Unfortunately it's economically infeasible to produce dark-orange ballpoint pens -- so shall I shut up and write with black like everybody else? "You can have any color as long as
For the sealed boxes to be cheap they have to be mass-market. What happens to those of different needs, or even tastes?
Kaa
For anybody interested, Psion's RevoPlus, rebadged as Diamond Mako, is being sold all over the net for ~$100 a pop. Travel modem is another $60 or so, and of course these things can talk IR to GSM phones.
Try, e.g. www.outpost.com, www.sparco.com.
Kaa
Chinese culture, on the other hand, is the oldest culture in existance and has existed, in one form or another, for 2,000 years.
Hey man, learn your history. Even ignoring people like Egyptians, Jewish culture certainly existed for much more than 2000 years. For Chrissakes, Christianity is 2000 years old!
Kaa
Yeah, right. Like I'm going to trust an outfit that puts a Turing-complete interpreter in a MAIL CLIENT, and gives it full access to both the filesystem and the outgoing mail queue for ANYTHING related to security
You mean Emacs, right? Wasn't there a time when incoming mail opened in Emacs's mail client could execute arbitrary Elisp code?
Kaa
I'm sorry, but that is neodarwinian fascist nonsense. Nobody is hard wired to do *anything*. We are all humans, and we all have a choice. We are not automatons, driven by instinct.
I'm sorry, too, but that point of view doesn't pass a reality check. Yes, we are not automatons driven by instincts, but we are not abstract minds inhabiting some plane of ideas either. You cannot ignore the body, which clearly has a lot of stuff "hardwired" into it. And before you ask, no, I don't accept the popular-in-Catholicism-etc. idea that body urges are evil/sinful and should be suppressed in favor of "pure" mind.
People are hardwired for a lot of things. Some are obvious -- thirst, hunger, self-preservation, sex, protection of children. Some are more controversial -- e.g. territoriality. Some are very controversial -- e.g. aggression. But saying that no one is hardwired to do anything is just false.
Note that this does not mean that there is no personal responsibility -- there definitely is, and "uncontrollable urge" is not a justification for doing something bad. In a society people are expected to control their urges and those who break the rules, whatever they may be, are punished. That's fine. But even if the urges are controlled/suppressed you cannot deny their existence. Christianity for centuries tried to promote the idea that sex is sinful and how successful has it been? (besides keeping a whole lot of psychotherapists in business).
I do think that where people cannot be responsible for themselves, the wider sommunity should step in
That's very dangerous ground you walk on. All totalitarian regimes start from this point. The critical questions, as usual, are "Who decides?" and "Who is in control?". Should government decide whether I am addicted to Quake and place me in a special category of people who can't buy computer games and can access only special computers which report to my probation officer how much have I played today? Or maybe it will decide that I am addicted to porn and put a device on me that will give me an electric shock every time I get an erection -- that should "cure" me of porn, right?
Kaa
Is this any harder in the "real world" than it was in school? Nope. The internet is out there for everybody, and it's now just too hard to track everyone's work in a foolproof way
You don't understand. In a school you have to prove something about yourself, viz. that you have acquired some knowledge. In the real world nobody really cares about what knowledge happens to sit inside your head. In the real world people care about getting things done and if you can do things by getting stuff off the net, more power to you.
If someone handed you one and it looked real, would you call the university to verify that it was real? No, you'd say "wow, MIT!" and hire him/her.
Heh. Haven't worked for large companies, have you? A mom-and-pop shop might not check, but a big corp *will* check, and it will check your previous jobs, and dates on them, and etc. etc.
Kaa
I still don't see your point.
Alice's signal, to any observer that lacks the proper OTP, looks like white noise. It is still a signal because Bob, having the proper OTP, can decode it into useful information.
You are mixing up two concepts: "true" white noise on the one hand, and something that cannot be proven NOT to be white noise, on the other hand. Algorithms A and A' are irrelevant -- they can be simple XOR for argument's sake.
Alice's algorithm does NOT result in a pure white noise -- it just LOOKS like pure white noise and it is impossible to prove otherwise.
Kaa
Steganography - hope I spelled it right this time - is the attempt to hide a signal
I am hiding a signal. If Alice does what I described and sends the output to Bob, then Bob, provided he knows how the streams were mixed and has a copy of the OTP, can extract the original information from the seemingly-white-noise message.
On the other hand, Eve, should she happen to intercept the message, cannot prove that there is anything but white noise in the message.
Q.E.D.
Kaa
It is mathematically impossible to hide information in another medium that cannot be figured out
Bullshit. Take some data, encrypt it with OTP, and combine the result, using some non-utterly-trivial mix strategy, with white noise. If you want you can match the statistical characteristics of white noise to the ones of your OTP stream.
That, of course, does not answer the question why would anybody send white noise to another person, but it is hiding information in another medium. What's mathematically impossible about it?
Kaa
No, I disagree. See, if you rent, then the idea is that you get upgrades included
;-). Besides, it's a question of the absolute amount: I'll pay an extra quarter for a convenient can of Pepsi without thinking, but I will not pay extra thousands of dollars without checking carefully if I can get it cheaper.
Point taken.
Still, keep in mind that for major pieces of software like Office, the next-version-release-dates are generally known a year or two in advance. MS software release cycle is quite predictable all by itself.
typically people pay a big premium for conveince
People do, but CFOs of corporations are not really people
Kaa
So if you sign on for 3 years or 5 years, that is the price you pay. So that is a constant, wouldn't you agree?
Yes it is, but so is the price you pay upfront to "own" software forever. You were claiming that renting software gives you *more* predictability -- well, no, it gives you exactly the same predictability as buying.
But the major hassle, co-ordinating a huge upgrade over hundreds or thousands of machines is eliminated at least in part by the subscription
I don't think so. What will happen is that MS will just send you a CD for a network install and you have to do all the work yourself anyway. You still have to admin/manage everything -- all we are talking about is payment terms for software, nothing else. How I pay for software has no relationship to the ease of using/upgrading it.
Yes, it is. For the same reason that people will pay $150k for a $125k house over the course of 30 years
OK, let's see. Let's whip out my Excel and calculate the implied interest rate. We have a $2,500 value that I pay off by making monthly payments of $100 for three years... That's 2.12% monthly, which means an annualized interest rate of slightly over 25%. Still think it's a good deal? Even borrowing from credit cards makes more sense...
Kaa
The cost of software can be easily predicted
How come? Unless MS gives you guarantees about pricing for many years down the road (highly unlikely) you have exactly the same predicting power.
Buy: Pay a chunk now, amortize it over three years, do it again at unknown cost.
Rent: Pay monthly over three years, do it again at unknown cost.
they won't have to worry about deploying/managing updates and upgrades
They do. First of all, they'll have to deal with security patches. Second, once three years are over and a new version comes in, who do you think will have to deal with data migration and untangling these little clever hacks that users wrote using the suddenly-not-supported-any-more features?
Getting the latest (or any version) is going to cost $2500. Thats a big expenditure. Now, instead of paying for it all at once, maybe it'd be nice for them to pay $75/month for three years. That'd work out better for a huge majority of customers
In one way, yes. It's always better to pay later than to pay early. In your scheme MS is basically giving everybody a three-year interest-free loan.
On the other hand, the choice disappears: maybe after three years I am in a bad financial shape. Under the 'buy' model my operating costs for software are zero. Under the 'rent' model, my operating costs are determined by MS.
Even if its more than that, say $100/month, its a deal for most customers
It is? 100 x 36 = $3,600. You mean instead of paying $2,500 to use something forever I get to pay $3,600 to use exactly the same thing for 3 years and that's a good deal???!
Thank you, I'll pass.
Kaa
Supercavitation is really not anything new, however it spells big big trouble for the US military
I doubt it very much. The US submarine doctrine has always been based on stealth: staying undetected (aka pretending to be a big hole in the middle of the ocean) is US subs' strong suit. I believe there is general consensus that staying-stealthy-while-detecting-the-other-guy capabilities of US Navy are noticeably better than those of the Russians.
Nothing in our arsenal comes even close to competing with this technology, and, as the post said, it will change the face of naval warfare
Maybe, maybe not. Keep in mind that supercavitating torpedos have a very, very big drawback -- they are not guided. They are basically a bullet -- you shoot it out and it goes in a straight line until it hits something or runs out of steam. This means they are useful only at very short ranges, and only if you have a very good idea where the enemy submarine is. Neither condition is usually true in submarine warfare.
what good are our carrier groups when you've got torpedoes coming in as fast as an Indycar (faster!).
Carrier groups have an anti-sub screen. Generally the large surface groups try not to get an enemy sub anywhere close to shoot off a torp, supercavitating or not. If a sub managed to get close enough to shoot, I doubt it would matter very much whether the torpedo is very fast.
Besides, there are subs which are equipped with anti-ship cruise missiles. Cruise missles are even faster, can be launched from farther away, and can guide themselves. This is already an existing threat and it sounds more dangerous to me than supercavitating torps.
Somehow I doubt the Navy will be holding a big discount sale of its carriers any time soon.
Kaa
Unless human miniaturization happens and mouth-to-ear distance shrinks considerably, I don't think any cellular phone the size of a finger is going to be useful. Unless, of course, it folds and unfolds in a complicated, plasticky-breakable way. And you have to put the dialing buttons on that "finger device", right? And probably some LCD screen to show you what you punched in? And a battery to make it last through the day, at least? This all has to fit on/in one finger, and you expect it to become available in a couple of years? I don't think so.
Kaa
Public perception of hackers needs to be addressed as well as unfiying the rights of people and seeing past public opinion.
You don't get the point. The solution to the problem is not to make hax0rs acceptable. The solution is to make sure that all people, regardless of whether the majority thinks they are wackos or upstanding citizens, have the same rights.
It's a legal issue: separating people into having-legal-meaning classes. For example if you were convicted of felony, you cannot buy a gun -- you rights are different from those of "normal" people.
The arguments at the trial came very close to claiming that suspicious malcontents (hax0rs or not) have less rights that Joe Sixpacks. And that is what caused my hackles to rise.
Kaa
So 2600 can't link to DeCSS because they're l33t hax0rs. However, the New York Times can link to DeCSS because their legitimate reporters.
.... 5 - doubts the word of government. Shoot on sight.) and apply them to everybody.
What if 2600 linked to the New York Times article?
To hell with linking to NYT. There is a huge underlying assumption here: that people disapproved by mainstream (e.g. 2600) have less rights than people approved by mainstream (e.g. NYT). This, obviously, doesn't look like a sustainable position, at least if you state it openly. However, veiling it in language of 'intent' seems to be OK.
If someone is going to claim that 133t hax0rs cannot legally do anything NYT can do, I would like to ask that person to submit a system of ratings (e.g. 1 - highly patriotic. Jumps when told to jump, even from tall buildings;
"Hey, citizen class 4! You are not allowed to look there!"
Kaa
Why and how is a computer program expressive speech? What does it express?
I don't see this as a hard question. Computer code that I write expresses my ideas, my understandings, my envisioning of how things (should) work. When I design a system, oftentimes it's easier to think in computer code than in "normal" words.
For a simple example, consider the Tower of Hanoi puzzle solution, expressed in Lisp. It's not really about telling computer to move things around. It's about the ideas of recursion and problem-solving, very elegantly expressed. This piece of code is about an idea, not about telling a computer how to do things.
Kaa
That's my point. Even with this stupidly simple interface there is still far too much that can go wrong
...
Basically the problem is that computers are open-ended and there's too much that's outside the seller's control.
The key expression was "intrinsically complex problems". My point is that life is complicated and there is very little anybody can do about it, even if [shudder] it was all under the seller's control. Very-limited-functionality devices work in some cases and do not work in others. Why do you think electric/electronic typewriters disappeared? They are much simpler to use than word processors, aren't they?
Computers are open-ended for a reason -- they are general-purpose devices for manipulating symbols. Yes, for some people that's too much complexity to handle. But they are probably the same people that stand before a soft drink dispenser in McDonalds for five minutes pulling a lever on which "Push for ice" is written (yes, I've personally seen this. After five minutes the guy went to the counter to complain that the machine is broken).
"Make something that any idiot can use, and only idiots will use it".
Kaa
It would be nice if people realised that paying for the extra service at the small shop is worth it, but it has been shown time and time again people will go for cheaper
And how do you know that the extra service at the small shop is worth the extra price? For some people it is, and for some it is not.
A very simple example -- in my town there is old/small/family hardware store, and a Home Depot close by. Small items (hangers, adapters, boxes of nails, etc.) cost one and a half to two time more in the small shop than they cost at Home Depot. For technical questions (such as "can I use widget foo with attachment bar and do I need qux for it?") the salespeople at the small shop are about as useful as the Home Depot droids, which is to say not at all.
To me it seems that the small shop just cannot compete. I don't see any additional benefit to me from buying stuff there, so I don't. I would assume that most people around do the same thing.
Now, why again, "paying for the extra service at the small shop is worth it"?
Kaa
you'd need to make the product much simpler
"Make it idiot-proof, and somebody will make a better idiot"
Imagine a computer with three buttons: Send Mail. Read Mail. Browse Web.
Making a very-limited-choice interface is not a solution for dealing with intrinsically complex problems.
"Send Mail" button. OK. Wait, my mail returned to me with the "address unknown" message! The button doesn't work!
"Read Mail" button. OK. But where is my "Print" button, and "Reply to" button, and "Delete" button, and "Move to folder" button, and how do I deal with make-money-fast messages a hundred of which is sitting in my inbox...
"Browse Web" button. Hmm... You mean it is just a shortcut to Internet Explorer? Or is it supposed to do something else? And what are all these buttons on websites? I was promised I would need only three buttons and this site has four! Oh, here is a simple site, it just says "type your AOL password here and click OK" -- that I can do...
Kaa
Learn the definitions. Memorise them! That's ninety percent of the work.
Anything 90% of which is memorizing definitions is unlikely to be interesting. Or useful, come to think of it.
Kaa